Overview and CQC Inspections

OverallRequires improvement

Our inspector's description of this service

Last updated 18 October 2018
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

The inspection took place on 10 September 2018 and was announced. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection because the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care and we needed to be sure that they would be in.

The inspection was undertaken by one adult social care inspector. Before the inspection we reviewed other information we held about the service including notifications sent to us by the provider. Notifications are information about specific important events the service is legally required to send to us. We also looked at information in the Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make.

During the inspection we spoke with five people, three members of staff, the acting head of care and the business manager. We reviewed four people's care plans. We also looked at records relating to the management of the service such as incident and accident records, meeting minutes, staff training records, policies, audits and complaints.

Inspection ratings

We rate most services according to how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led they are, using four levels:

Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Inadequate – the service is performing badly and we've taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.

No rating/under appeal/rating suspended – there are some services which we can’t rate, while some might be under appeal from the provider. Suspended ratings are being reviewed by us and will be published soon.

Ticks and crosses

We don't rate every type of service. For services we haven't rated we use ticks and crosses to show whether we've asked them to take further action or taken enforcement action against them.

There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.